


Not a Fan of Puppeteers

by Scrawlers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Gen, post-Battle City but before Memory World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 06:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17017158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: The Millennium Items are stolen from Yuugi after Battle City, and Hirutani ends up with the Millennium Rod. This ends about as well as one would expect.





	Not a Fan of Puppeteers

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a few years ago, but in light of Tumblr being . . . Tumblr, I've decided to archive everything here.
> 
> This was written in response to a prompt I received from someone who wanted to see Hirutani wield the Millennium Rod. Basic idea here is that someone stole the Millennium Items (sans Puzzle, probably) and scattered them. The squad splits up to find them, with Jounouchi and Honda tracking a set of coordinates to . . . well, this.

There were three things Jounouchi hated about the present situation, the over-arcing problem aside:

One, the coordinates had led them, Jounouchi and Honda, to the warehouse district.

Two, the Millennium Item the coordinates had led them to was the Millennium Rod, which for personal reasons was Jounouchi’s least favorite of all the damned things, even taking into account Bakura’s creepy-ass Ring.

And three, the person who reclined back on top of a stack of large wooden crates, the Millennium Rod held lazily in his hand, was none other than Hirutani Kimio, one of the last people on earth Jounouchi ever wanted to see again.

“I knew it,” Honda said, and Jounouchi cast him a side glance before he looked back at Hirutani, who smirked down at him. “The second we got here I had a feeling—”

“You and me both,” Jounouchi muttered. A crowd of Hirutani’s gang members surrounded them in a loose circle, and a smaller cluster stood around the stack of boxes. They looked casual enough, but Jounouchi could tell by their stances that they were ready the pounce the second Hirutani gave the order. Not that  _they_ would be much of a threat, Jounouchi didn’t think, but there were a lot of them and being outnumbered always made things difficult. 

“All right, Hirutani,” Jounouchi said loudly, and the white glow from a nearby light lit up the broad smirk on Hirutani’s face as Jounouchi addressed him, “why don’t you make this easy and just hand that thing you’re holding over? You give it to us, we leave you alone without a fight—everybody wins. What do you say?” With any luck, Hirutani would have no idea what the Millennium Rod even  _was,_ and Jounouchi could convince him to part with it. Granted, convincing Hirutani of anything had never been easy  _before_ , but . . .

“Hmm . . .” Hirutani bounced the Rod slowly in his palm, tossing it up a little in the air before he caught it again as he turned his eyes to the sky in mock thought. “No.”

Honda huffed in irritation beside Jounouchi, and as the gang members laughed, Jounouchi curled his fingers into fists. “Why not?” he demanded. “What’s that thing to you?”

“Nothing, really.” Hirutani caught the Rod again, and turned it over in his hand so that the light from the nearby lamp caught it, and sparkled off the gold surface. Even without the lamp, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight, the Millennium Rod seemed to glow in the darkness. Jounouchi hated it. “To be honest, I thought of selling it. This thing is  _solid gold,_ or at least it feels like it. There is no way it wouldn’t fetch more than a decent amount of yen.”

“Then why didn’t you?” After all, had he sold it to some old, rich collector, Jounouchi probably could have stolen it. Not that he was exactly a fan of stealing (anymore), but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he would rather do a few rounds with a crotchety old geezer than Hirutani.

“I was going to, but then I realized what it could do,” Hirutani said, and Jounouchi felt a sinking feeling in his gut as Hirutani’s leer grew. “I couldn’t have someone  _else_ wielding it after learning that, could I? Not that  _I_ really need it, but there’s no need to hand someone else that kind of power, no matter how much they pay me. I’m not an idiot, Jounouchi.”

“Could’ve fooled us,” Honda said, and he didn’t bother to keep his voice down. Hirutani glanced at him, but said nothing.

“Okay, fine,” Jounouchi said. “You don’t need it, and you don’t want anyone else to use it against you. I get that. So give it to us.” Hirutani raised his eyebrows, but before he could say anything, Jounouchi continued, “We’re not gonna use it either. In fact, we’re gonna take it somewhere  _no one_ can use it. So just hand it over.” He extended his hand, palm up, so that Hirutani could toss the Rod down to him. Hirutani made no move to do so, and so Jounouchi huffed an impatient sigh. “Come on, man, don’t be an asshole about this.”

“How long has it been since we last saw each other?” Hirutani asked, and Jounouchi tossed his hands in the air and turned away, almost unable to believe that Hirutani was so unwilling to cooperate that he was changing the subject. Almost. “Answer the question, Jounouchi. How long has it been?”

“You mean since I threw you off the warehouse roof?” Jounouchi asked, looking back, and he felt a thrill of satisfaction that the smirk had fallen from Hirutani’s face.

“Yes,” Hirutani said curtly. “How long since then?”

Jounouchi shrugged. “Dunno. I spend so little time thinking about you I couldn’t say for sure.” He put his hands in his pockets, and did his best to bite back a smirk of glee at the glare now directed his way.

“Well, apparently it’s been long enough that you’ve forgotten, once again, how this works.” Hirutani twirled the Rod between his fingers like a baton, and it would have looked lazy if not for the sharp look in his eyes. “You don’t give me orders. You don’t call any shots. And you and I don’t make deals.” Hirutani paused, and then a little smirk quirked on his lips. “At least, not any on  _your_ terms.”

Jounouchi rolled his eyes. “Oh right, how could I have forgotten,” he said sarcastically, and then he sighed. “Look, I’m just not in the mood to do this with you right now, okay? You don’t know what that thing is—what it  _really_ is. It’s not something you want to mess with.”

Hirutani shrugged. “I don’t, generally. Like I said, I don’t need it. My boys obey me without it. Isn’t that right, boys?”

A chorus of  _“yes, sir”s_  went up from around the group, and Jounouchi felt disgust roil inside him.

“Then you don’t need it,” he stressed, and once again he held out his hand. “Just give it to me and we’ll get out of here.”

“No,” Hirutani said again, and as Jounouchi opened his mouth—to say what, he didn’t know, but his patience was finally rubbed out and replaced by a fresh rush of temper—he added, “As I told you not two seconds ago, you don’t tell me what to do, nor do you dictate our terms. As I told you shortly before that, I’m not giving away anything that would give power I hold to others. And as you should have known even before we started talking, now that I have you here, I’m not about to let you leave.”

Jounouchi closed his mouth, surprise momentarily overtaking his fury, but a moment later, he laughed under his breath.

“So, what, you plan on using your shiny new toy on me to make me stay?” he asked, and he nodded his head to indicate the Rod. Hirutani raised his eyebrows a little, but otherwise didn’t answer, and Jounouchi barked one sharp laugh. “Go ahead and try. That thing doesn’t work on me.”

“Is that so?” Hirutani said. His tone was mildly interested, and far too calm for someone whose plan had just been ruined. Jounouchi narrowed his eyes. “That’s interesting. Irrelevant, and no less than I’d expect from you now that I think about it, but interesting.” Jounouchi opened his mouth to ask how it wasn’t relevant, but—as if Hirutani knew what he was going to ask before he did—Hirutani said, “But who said I was going to use it on  _you_?”

The last word had barely left Hirutani’s mouth before Honda pounced on Jounouchi with enough force to knock them both to the ground. Jounouchi’s head smacked against the concrete, and he swore as Honda pinned him there and yanked his arms behind his back. Jounouchi twisted to try and throw Honda off him, but all this succeeded in doing was allowing Honda to twist his arm up higher behind his back, and Jounouchi hissed through his teeth as he felt his shoulder threatening to dislocate.

“Honda, what the  _fuck_ —get  _off_ —”

Hirutani laughed as Honda hauled Jounouchi to his feet, his arm still twisted up behind his back just enough to send spikes of pain through it every couple of seconds. Jounouchi looked over his shoulder and saw that Honda’s expression was sickeningly blank; there was no light in his eyes at all, no recognition, no cognitive thought. Jounouchi could break the hold he was in, he thought; he might hurt his arm worse, but he could probably take Honda out, at least enough to get himself free. But doing so would hurt  _Honda,_ and Jounouchi didn’t really want to do that on the regular, much less when he wasn’t himself.

Jounouchi looked back at Hirutani as Hirutani jumped down from the stack of crates he had been seated on.

“Let him go,” he snarled, and Hirutani laughed again.

“Why would I do that? He’s so much  _better_ this way. All those years of being nothing but an aggravating pest, and now he’s finally useful. Really, this worked out better than I could have dreamed. Not only will he not get in our way, but he’ll actually help our cause.” Hirutani smirked. “I’m sorry for all those times I thought about killing him. That would have been a waste. He makes for a much better slave than corpse.”

White hot rage so powerful it was almost blinding surged through Jounouchi as his blood pounded in his ears. “You son of a—”

He barely had time to catch Hirutani’s eyes narrow before Honda’s foot slammed into the back of his knee and forced him forward. Jounouchi’s knees hit the concrete hard, and while Honda kept his arm pinned behind his back, his other hand grabbed a fistful of Jounouchi’s hair to shove his head down, holding him in place.

“Fucking  _A_ ,” Jounouchi hissed, as his knees and shoulder throbbed. “Was that  _really_ fucking necessary? Get a gri—”

“Considering your habit of mouthing off, yes, it was,” Hirutani said. By this point he had come to stand right in front of Jounouchi, and Jounouchi glared up at him. Despite his apparent irritation over Jounouchi’s smart mouth, Hirutani didn’t look or sound perturbed at all. If anything, he seemed amused. “But don’t worry. We’ll break you of that soon enough.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Jounouchi said caustically, but his instinctive recoil when Hirutani used the top end of the Rod to brush his bangs away from his eyes took the edge off his tone. 

“Of course, there’s so much to do with you I barely know where to start,” Hirutani said, and Honda held Jounouchi’s head in place as Hirutani stroked the Millennium Rod against his cheek. “Between payback for what happened last time, punishment for your little display here tonight, and all the lost time we have to cover considering all the time you’ve been gone . . .” Hirutani heaved an affected sigh. “We have enough on our plates to keep us busy for quite some time, Jounouchi. Even with our old friend Honda helping, this is bound to take days. Maybe even weeks, depending on how long it takes for the message to sink in.” He smiled. “Fortunately for us, I’ve never been the type to give in easily. I don’t get bored, at least not with things like this. So we’ll cover it all in time, don’t worry.”

“I can hardly wait,” Jounouchi spat, and Hirutani grinned broadly.

“Good,” he said, and he tapped the Millennium Rod lightly against Jounouchi’s other cheek, “because you don’t have to.” He looked back to Honda, then, and all false affability was gone from his voice, replaced by a sharp, commanding tone. “Bring him and follow me.”

“Where are we going, Hirutani-san?” one of the gang members asked, as Honda hauled Jounouchi roughly to his feet. Jounouchi tried to throw him off, but Honda’s grip was like steel, and Jounouchi clenched his teeth against another hiss of pain as Honda gave his arm another twist. “The warehouse?”

“ _You’re_ going to the warehouse,” Hirutani told him, and as the gang member faltered he explained, “There’s a chance that Yuugi kid will come looking for Jounouchi, given enough time. You all are going to the warehouse to serve as a diversion in case that happens. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“B-But—” the gang member protested, and Jounouchi felt a thrill of satisfaction and pride for Yuugi as the kid—and several of the other gang members around him, Jounouchi noticed—looked visibly afraid.

Hirutani felt no sympathy. The kid quailed as Hirutani rounded on him, and the guys that had been standing near him quickly scampered back.

“Was what I said just now not clear?” Hirutani demanded softly. The kid shook his head once, thought better of it, and then nodded before he froze again.

“I—I don’t know what to do, b-but yes!” he cried, as Hirutani raised his eyebrows. “You—you were clear, sir—”

“Then do as I fucking say and  _go to the warehouse_ ,” Hirutani growled, and more than a few of the gang members turned and bolted in the direction of their warehouse. “Stay there until I tell you to leave. I don’t care how late it is or how worried Mommy and Daddy are; you don’t leave until I give the order, understand?”

“Yes, sir!” the gang member squeaked, and without another word he turned and sprinted after the rest cowards Hirutani had working for him. Hirutani snorted in disgust.

“Worthless maggots, the entire lot of them,” he muttered, and he looked over at Jounouchi with a smile. “Which is why I need you. You always were different from them, Jounouchi. Together, you and I will rule the world.”

“Want to show me the world you think we’ll rule from the top of another building before I throw you off it again?” Jounouchi asked, but Hirutani only smiled a second before Honda shoved Jounouchi forward and forced his arm up and back; there was a sickening  _pop_ followed by searing pain through Jounouchi’s shoulder and chest, the breath leaving his lungs in a rush.

“Hm. Shoulder dislocation wasn’t how I was  _planning_ to start this, but it’s as good of a place as any,” Hirutani said, and he laughed a little as he turned away and started walking in the opposite direction from their old warehouse. “Now start walking. We’ve got farther to go than the rest of those idiots and I’m growing tired of waiting.”

Jounouchi breathed hard through his nose, but as Honda pushed him forward to follow after Hirutani, he hissed, “Honda, now would be a really good time for you to show some sense, get a clue, and fight that thing off. Show some resistance, some— _something_ , I don’t freaking care, just  _something_ to show you’re not gonna listen to Hirutani this whole goddamn time—”

But Honda showed nothing. No resistance, not a spark of light or life in his eyes; just a blank stare he kept directed at Hirutani’s back as he forced Jounouchi along, Jounouchi’s now useless right arm held in a solid grip, his left arm pinned to his side.

Well, Jounouchi thought, they had screwed  _this_ retrieval mission up royally, and that was the understatement of the century. But he had survived Ra—he had survived an attack from an Egyptian  _God_  during a  _Shadow Game_ —and so whatever bullshit Hirutani was dreaming up, Jounouchi was sure he could survive that, too. He just had to wait it out, and hopefully save Honda in the process.

He could only hope that, wherever they were, Yuugi and the others were having better luck than he was. 


End file.
